Last week at the barn

Tuesday while I was at work I got a call on my cell phone from barn manager Caitlin. A call from the barn always gives my heart rate a little jump; it's not like they call to say what a great day Dude and Bestie are having. Apparently a weather front started to come through right as they began bringing horses in, with a sudden drop in temperature and quite a bit of wind, which totally set some of the horses off. One of those was Bestie, who according to Caitlin, was racing around her field bucking and carrying on with her pasture mate Sadie. Until she fell. Which Caitlin saw. She said Bestie got back up and seemed to walk off normally, if a bit dispiritedly, like "Geez, that was a dumb thing to do."

I walked Bestie that night and she seemed ok, maybe a bit stiff on her left rear leg, which is the side she fell on. Wednesday the horses didn't go out due to the weather and when I arrived after work and looked at her, she had stocked up a little bit but no more than she does normally when in. We ended up giving her bute through Thursday night and I rubbed her down with liniment Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

As luck would have it, former barn manager Emma visited this weekend with her acupuncture needles and I asked her if she would mind checking Bestie over. She didn't detect any soreness that was out of the ordinary and treated Bestie in a variety of spots that Emma described as good for "old ladies." So that's how Bestie became the equine pin cushion below.

Bestie was really good about the whole thing; pretty relaxed. In the photo below you can see one needle near her girth area. She's sort of giving me the look because Emma had tried to connect a little electrical impulse wire to a couple of the needles for a bit extra "oomph" (medical term), and Bestie did not like the feel of the draped wire AT ALL. So Emma didn't pursue that and just let her relax with the needles. She did get pretty snoozy.

Earlier in the week Dude had limboed under his stall guard and taken off down the aisle toward freedom - the side door. I totally panicked because there is still construction going on for the new arena, and it was dark, and if any horse could wander into a construction area, it would be Dude. But luckily, someone had already shut the end door, so by the time I grabbed a bucket with a bit of grain and raced to the end of the barn with his halter, Dude was standing with his  nose pressed against the closed door trying to figure out plan B. Plan B ended up not being too exciting - letting me put his halter on him and lead him back to his stall, where he resumed eating his hay. That happened on the second night of rubbing liniment on Bestie, so maybe Dude felt he had to do something really amazing to get my attention. I guess he's pretty flexible for a 20 year old! Note to self: watch him with the stall guard. We've been down this path before, and he keeps a wide enough spread between limbos - months - to lull me into thinking he's not ever going to do it again.